Is New FaceBook another Twitter??

It was 4^th feb. of 2004 when faceBook was released for the first time. A website that changed the definition of online social networking. This was not just a social networking website but also a new way to advertise products online. It integrated e-business, e-marketing with a social networking website. So, the results of this were not surprising. In 2008, it achieved the milestone of 100 million registered users, and hundreds of thousands of apps, communities etc. Currently facebook is the world’s 5^th most visited website. It gets more than a billion hits per month and each facebook user spends on an average 19 minutes per day. No doubt facebook has emerged as one of the best among the social networking websites.

Everything was fine till March 12^th 2009, when they launched the new user interface. It was horrible for facebook users. If we observe carefully we find that facebook is going to be the next twitter. But why the hell? I think one twitter is enough for us.

Vote here : --->

Do you like new FaceBook?

I believe the response from the users of facebook must have been very frustrating for the facebook’s interface development team. When I read the official post about the new layout, I got shocked. There are more than 7,000 comments, I went through initial 5-6 pages of comments. Believe me, I didn’t find any comment in the favor of new layout. Every one was shouting “Give me back my old facebook !!” or “new layout sucks !!”.

So, what are the problems with the new layout?

I think, the first mistake by facebook is that they were unable to understand the mentality of users. Users of faceBook were not mentally prepared to adopt the changes which happened all of a sudden. See the basic mantra behind the success of any social networking website is to create addiction for the website in the heart of users. People were addicted to using old facebook. They could not digest the unwanted changes. If the changes would have been gradual they might have adjusted well.

The second mistake which I noticed is the presentation of the new faceBook. They tried to put more and more stuffs in a single page. It makes faceBook more confusing. See, providing more and more fun stuff and apps is nothing without good presentation. If you see facebook carefully now it has only 3 columns, left (The feed), Middle (The updates) and right which have the information about publishers and rest of the page is blank. Why are they not optimizing the blank space in the page?

This new interface is a killer from the apps developers prospective. In old layout new app had high probability of spreading over the network. In the new Facebook, apps have been almost completely killed off. They’re still there, but now users have to look for them in individual profiles. So In new facebook layout apps have low spread rate. This will also affect the development of faceBook.

GeekOnNet is conducting a poll as shown above whether you like or not the new layout of the facebook. Please give your opinion as Yes or No or I don't care. If you have any suggestion, write as comment to this post.

At the end I would say, please don’t make facebook another twitter. One twitter is good for us. Follow me on twitter.

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